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Friday, 15 May 2015

Kintsukuroi: Sacred Scars

Have you ever been smashed? Completely smashed. To pieces. Like a vase or a plate. Or maybe you had some bits of you removed. Pieces. Removed. Like a vase or a plate that got smashed and one of the pieces slipped under the fridge and got lost forever.

You know what really does get smashed on occasion? Vases and plates. Butter fingers and wobbly tables have been blights on our ceramics since the very first... ceramics. Back when the primordial ceramic egg cracked open and a ceramic chicken got out and someone caught it and made a pot out of it.

That's where kintsukuroi comes in. It's the art of fixing things but, most emphatically NOT fixing things so they're good as new. Fixing them instead so their cracks glitter and shine. Taking their history - the knocks, the falls, the wear and tear - and far from hiding it, inscribing it upon their surface for all to see.

The effect is beautiful. Not an attempt at pristine, untroubled beauty, but a beauty that speaks of a journey through time and space. A beauty that allows buttery fingers, wobbly tables and stony floors to become part of its creation.

Dana over at shewalkssoftly.com has been smashed to pieces more than most. Her particular journey through time and space has, over these past years, been terrifying and inspiring in equal measure. Hopefully there weren't too many doctors with buttery fingers or wobbly operating tables involved, but still.

Sacred Scars is her new site. It's a site for those who have had to face their own frailty and overcome it with a strength they perhaps never even knew they had. A place where they can share their story, inspire and be inspired.